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Sunday, October 23, 2016

Pig Ethics

People today claim that we are now a nation without morals.
A nation not only without morals but utterly lacking in ethics, principles,
pride, shame, or standards. That is not true. We are not lacking in any of
those, we have merely replaced the ones we once had with new ones. In place of
communal values, in place of religious values, those sort of values passed
down to us from generation to generation, we now have capitalist values. They
are what Jack London referred to as pig-ethics, an ethical code that dictates
that whatever pig can eat the most from the trough is the winner.

Let’s strip it of all makeup and finery, let’s remove the
lipstick from the pig. Pure and simple, they are the ethics of the capitalists.
It is the ethics of profitüber
alles. It justifies everything in the name of making money, opposes all
values that stand in the way of profit. There is no human interaction they do
not wish to make a financial transaction where someone can profit. Letting you
hold your child after he or she is delivered? There’s a charge for that.

That’s why the common well has been replaced with bottled
water. It is why women fifty years ago were urged to use formula rather than
breast-feed. It is why marijuana is illegal while pharmaceutical companies rush
to make synthetic equivalents.

The idolatry of capitalism—idolatry, it is the most accurate
word I can think of to describe our relationship to capitalism—states that anything
is justifiable if it was done in the pursuit of profit. Evict an old woman from
her home? Hey, she was standing in the way of a business deal. Deprive health
care to a child? Look, if we didn’t, the whole system would break down.

We believe that it is only under this ideology that industry
can prosper. It is only by this ideology that spirituality can remain
unpolluted by do-gooders and well-wishers. Not only do we need to believe in
capitalism, we need to believe in it unconditionally. We need to strip from it
any other consideration in the same way Hitler wished to strip from the German
bloodline any traces of impurity. This will be the surest way of preserving our
environment and our natural resources. It is the answer for everything.

Why do we think this way? Because capitalism is not merely
an economic system, it is a values system. We cannot be capitalists without
accepting the values of capitalism. They seep into our religious ideals, they
affect our art, they even affect family life. We live in a society where both
parents work away from their children and expect people to raise them for
money. We expect commercial television to amuse them but instead it
indoctrinates them into being good consumers. We are unable to give them the
time and attention we know they need and so instead we buy for them the things
television is telling them they need.

Take a look at look at Donald Trump as the perfect example
of capitalist principles in their purest form. He is a success because he has
money. There is no other reason for calling him a success. Absent money or the
ability to create money from business transactions, what does he add to
humanity? Does he expand human understanding? Does he do good for the
environment or contribute to the arts? There is no other reason why people
would invite him to party let alone consider him worthy of the presidency. In
every way he personifies the crude values corporate television displays for us.
People, especially females, are commoditized, their value measured in the same
manner of a cut of meat in the butcher’s window.

Not only does capitalism not factor in human values, it
doesn’t even factor in human beings. So long as a person does not have money,
he does not exist. Democracy is based on the idea of one vote per person but
capitalism states that we vote with our money. And if we have none, well I
guess we’re not allowed into the voting booth.

Capital doesn’t mind if a person is replaced by a machine.
If the job can be done more cheaply, so much the better. Capital doesn’t care
if all people are replaced by machines while billions starve outside the artificial
environment of supply and demand. Machines, after all, are much more reliable
than people, much more suited to the system capitalism demands. Capital doesn’t
care if it is funneled into the hands of a few wealthy individuals, doesn’t
care if machines are used or if people are turned into machines. Humans have no
more implicit value than animals do in a capitalist system, and a quick glance
of a slaughterhouse video on YouTube will give you some indication of how much
animals are valued. In fact, people are worth less than animals in a capitalist
system because nobody is willing to pay money for chopped up people the way
they do ground beef. Only the unborn have value, and that for their stem cells.

The mineral worth of the human body is approximately $1.
That, to capitalism, is the value inherent in a human life. Beyond that a
person must either have capital or be capable of producing capital for someone
else. If one has capital, he is therefore a part of the system even if he does
nothing good for anyone else. If one has capital, he is admired, even if his
insatiable need for more disproportionately uses and poisons the limited
resources of our planet.

Will capitalism and the free market have a part to play in
the world to come? That is not the question we should be asking. The question
is, if only the values and interests of the free market are given voice and
power—and that is increasingly becoming the case—will we even have a future at
all? If the health of our economy is measured by how much fuel we burn up and by
how much we are able to consume, what kind of future are we headed toward?

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The Amazing MorseThe Amazing Morse is a blog dedicated to my works of fiction, primarily my first series, The Amazing Morse. My postings will be either from my own perspective or that of my character Dave Morse.